Sunday 29 May 2011 13.03 EDT
First published on Sunday 29 May 2011 13.03 EDT

The question for Dimitar Berbatov is of what happens next and, trying to break down that brick wall he builds around himself, whether there is any appetite remaining to try to scorch the sense that this felt like the final act of his time as a Manchester United player.

As many footballers can testify, there is usually one direction for those who are shown towards the exit at Old Trafford, especially when Sir Alex Ferguson is standing at the door, holding your coat. That direction is down and it is the only way Berbatov will be heading if all the assumptions are correct and this was the denouement of three eccentric years which have left us all in knots about whether to be bewitched or bewildered by what he does on a football field.

It is not an easy thing to explain how a man who was presented with the golden boot award for finishing alongside Carlos Tevez as the Premier League's most prolific scorer cannot even warrant a place among the substitutes for one of the most cherished nights of all.

When that man is supplanted by someone who has been selected for one league start all season, it can lead us to only one conclusion: Ferguson has lost whatever trust he once had in Berbatov to have any real impact on those matches when it needs a player with a certain mind-set to grab the occasion.

Michael Owen was hooked at half-time on that one occasion when he made the team at Sunderland, almost eight months ago now. In total he has started six league games in two years. But Ferguson had the choice of him or Berbatov and it was the club's record signing who was asked to a one-on-one meeting last week, thanked for his efforts then sent to the guillotine.

This was the equivalent of deciding that the expensive, shiny jacket that looked so good in the shop does not actually go with anything else in the wardrobe. Berbatov cost £30.75m when he signed from Tottenham Hotspur. Ferguson described him as a genius, someone who would compare with Eric Cantona, and yet here was the Bulgarian, on the biggest stage in club football, wearing a suitably grey suit, polished shoes and the expression you would normally see on a man who has just found his car has been keyed.

We can only guess where he watched the match – or if, indeed, he did. Berbatov was in the dressing room at half-time and, again, after the match, and the suggestion is he watched it on television. He certainly did not take his seat in the stand and, by the time the ordeal was almost done and the players were milling about on the pitch, waiting for their coronation as losers, he was still nowhere to be seen as the other squad members walked out on to the grass, trying to find the right words for their team-mates. His motives are not clear, whether this was his way of registering disgust or if it was simply a case of wanting to be alone with his thoughts. Perhaps it was a bit of both. Whatever his thinking, by not being there (and he was not at the club's post-match function either) he simply made himself even more conspicuous.

Part of the issue is that Berbatov has always seemed prone to insecurity and punishing self-analysis even in those periods when he is in the team. Does he have the mental fortitude to come back from an experience so crushing? Or does he reluctantly concede it is now blindingly obvious he is not seen as the player for these occasions?

Berbatov will always have his admirers but the truth is you have to go back 20 Champions League matches, to October 2008, and 1,134 minutes of game time to find his last goal in the competition, in a group tie against Celtic. Berbatov has started 25 out of United's 55 "big" games in his three seasons at the club – "big" meaning finals and semi‑finals, Champions League knockout ties, plus the Club World Cup and league matches against Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Spurs. Deadly against Blackburn Rovers, discarded against Barcelona.

Ferguson described it as "a heartache, not an easy thing to do", but United's manager has never shied away from making the difficult decisions. Now there is another one. The club could get a fee for Berbatov this summer, whereas he is out of contract at the end of next season. United can either take the "one-way" option they wrote into the original deal to extend it by 12 months or they can decide that, if they are to make up some of the ground between themselves and Barcelona, they cannot carry someone who has ceased to contribute at this level.

The paradox is this has been the most productive of Berbatov's three seasons in Manchester, with 20 league goals compared with 12 and nine in the previous two years. He is the first United player to score a hat-trick against Liverpool since 1946 and the first to manage three in a single season since Ruud van Nistelrooy in 2002-03.

Berbatov has fiddled with our minds, enthralled us, disappointed us,exhilarated and exasperated but in the years to come it may be that the game for which he is always remembered came on a Saturday night in London when he never even had to lace his boots.